Pixelmator Beta Notes

Whew, today is the day. Finally, we started sending our first closed beta seed to testers. I don’t have much time for beta description, but I wanted to make a few notes.

First of all, thank you very much for being so active with your emails about participating in Pixelmator Beta. It’s really great to know that so many people care about Pixelmator. That’s one more reason why it has to be great.

As I mentioned in the Pixelmator Beta Guidelines document (which comes with the application), the main purpose of Pixelmator Beta is to ensure the highest quality possible for the final version of the application. And by using beta and letting us know about any problems you are experiencing, you will help us to significantly improve the application before it is released.

And, I promise a little “thank you” gift for all of the beta testers once we are ready with Pixelmator.

However, one thing that I really would like to ask all of the people who are participating in beta is to please, please, please do not post any info or share the application yet. It’s not finished and any bad things that go public would hurt us. First you’d better give us a chance to fix them. We plan to have three seeds of the beta before the final release.

So, thank you very much, and I hope you enjoy the first beta of Pixelmator! (Be sure to try the filter rope. ;))

P.S. This weekend will be the first weekend we are to have some rest. Whoohooo! Well, half-rest. We could not stop thinking about and checking the status of Pixelmator bugs.

I hope I didn’t sign up to late for the beta, it sounds like quite a few people are interested. But, no matter, it’s good to know that there are a lot of testers, at least when I get the final product I’ll know it’s ready :).

Notify me only has to do with telling you about the release date, it doesn’t sign you up for the beta. The instructions for signing up are in the last post, though I have no idea if they are still accepting applicants.

Hi there. I was one of the large bunch of people who joined in the recent MacUpdate/MacHeist bundle. One of the promised goods there was to be part of this private beta and I’m very much looking forward to it. Should I have received an email by now or should I have signed up to the notification list as well?

Yes, MacHeist/MacUpdate promo purchasers are to get the beta. I am sorry for delays. We have to send a limited number of emails/hour. Anyone knows a good service for spam providers (we definitely need something like that)? 🙂

I know it’s called “closed beta” but what about the people who paid for the macupdate Promo bundle, where it has been mention, that every macheister (macheist.com) who paid for the bundle (like me), will get a closed beta/preview version of Pixelmator when it’s out. Can you explain me what i now should believe or should do? 🙁

First, congratulations on getting the beta out!! Can wait to try out and, hopefully, fill on of the missing gaps about using a mac.

Now, the question… still sending out those email to macheist customers? Cause, even after closing my eyes and saying “the mail will arrive” 3 times while knocking my heels, i still haven’t received the invite for the beta.

Paciente is a precious virtue… I’ll be sure to buy some next time I’m at the supermarket.

i love it. the intro selection does nothing at the moment though. :o)
the lasso to note where you apply the filter is cool. glad there’s also the option of turning that off when needed. i’ll just sum it up. if progress goes on fine, i am likely to ditch PS and go with the new standard — pixelmator. 3 cheers for pixelmator!

I just received your mail with the download link. Thank you! 🙂
Unfortunately, I have to wait another ten hours or so before I’m back home and ready for testing. Even worse, I have to work on saturday so half of my weekend will be over until I really can go into deep.

First of all; a BIG thank you and congratulations on Pixelmator 🙂
With the features and snappy-ness of the program you’ll definately make a lot of people extremely happy.
While I didn’t sign up for the beta, I do have one tiny request for Pixelmator, which kind of struck me after seeing your screenshots 😉

You (i.e.: Pixelmator) uses a very carefree approach with its loose panels. My question/request is to make them magnetic. As with all (semi)pro programs, if you use a lot of panels it tends to get cluttered or in the way. So making them magnetic so you can stick them together or simply stick them to the side would make the layout of the program a lot easier to maintain.

I’m definately going to give that program a try as soon as it’s out though… I’m using Photoshop CS3 at the moment, and while it’s pretty quick on my computer (iMac Core Duo), a program simply can’t be snappy enough 🙂 That, and the extremely simple “iLife”-esk layout of the program just makes you want to drewl instead of work, hehehe.

Got the beta last night and oh boy, do I like it.
I’ve already reported a few bugs, but I’m kind of missing one thing.
A bugtracker for submitting the bugs. It would be so much nicer to submit bugs to an online system, so one could also see the already listed bugs and not create a lot of duplicates. I believe there are many free BT’s out there that could be used for this?

But anyways, I can’t wait to get the final product, it’s just so amazingly fast. And looks super sweet as well. Hope you get all the bugs sorted soon.

Just wanting to say congratulations to the PIxelmator team, fantastic work so far. I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us (beyond the ‘Have i been chosen for the beta’ messages) that you have a well deserved break this weekend 🙂

i just heard about you guys and Pixelmator seems to show great promise by its feature. i’m very impress with its elegant look and looking forward to trying it myself. However, your tools seem to lack a ‘pen’ tool for creating paths, or is it there somewhere? If not will this be implemented as a tool in the near future?
good luck!

This is more alpha then beta, as it totally chokes on moderately sized images on a new MBP. Where do we report bugs? Most of the UI is barely discernible when laid over anything other than 100% white. Is there room for UI feedback as well?

If by “use” you mean that it recognizes the tablet, then you would be correct. However, it doesn’t distinguish between levels of sensitivity or when you use the eraser of the tablet pen. Again, in it’s current state, Pixelmator just doesn’t fit the bill.

After re-reading my post I have to be clear that Pixelmator is shaping up to be a great application. It loads extremely fast and does offer quite a bit. I was only commenting that for me personally that without tablet support it’s of no use for me. Sorry for being a negative nancy earlier.

The filters are extremely fast on my MBP. I would also like to say to the Pixelmator team “Great Job!”. I did send in a few bugs. I think it would be good if you could post some sort of roadmap for your future clients. There will no doubt be some who will be frustrated at something that might be addressed in the next release. A roadmap could certainly defray much of that sort of thing.

Pixelmator BETA i fun to use and test and look forward to the final release of 1.0 and 2.0 and 3.0 etc… 🙂

Check your mailbox. 🙂 If there is anyone else who should’ve received the beta, but didn’t – write me at support at pixelmator.com. I will be glad to fix this ASAP (tomorrow I guess, I have to have some sleep now).

Just wanted to thank you guys for including me in the beta program. I have looked forward to this app since I first heard of it over a month ago, and am both proud and excited to be a part of the beta group.
The app is fantastic, will save me a lot of money on licensing for my game studio over Photoshop, and will allow our texture artists (including myself) to finally leverage ALL the power of our Mac systems, saving us time (and in the end, money as well in that respect). I look forward to seeing it mature towards the final release. Again, thank you!

@Marco: If you read a few comments before yours, there are other MacUpdate-through-MacHeist bundle buyers who’ve not yet received our beta invitations. Saulius has asked us to e-mail him at the support @ddress, and he’ll get us sorted.

I hope that you find out the energy to correct bugs around, I find that we have several difference between processor (G4,G5,Intel), the benchmark needs to be more accurate . The fluidity of drawing with the brush tool needs to be optimized.
Filters are ok, on new machines try top down test, from Intel, to g3 if you can !

Have the best day on earth !

Cannot wait for the second beta !

Let’s go for it, I prefer to wait to get a perfect Pixelmator, because its a huge potential software…

this app looks amazing, really excited to see it finished! my only concern is that you guys were once associated with jumsoft, who have a pretty horrible reputation for bugs and support. you are breaking serious new ground with this software, how you choose to run this company could make or break the whole thing. do it right this time! keep up the great work.

I have to say, Pixelmator looks amazing. I’ve been following the development of the app and I want to check it out before upgrading to PS CS3; because I have a feeling I won’t be needing it. I’m guessing it’s impossible to be a beta tester by now, so I’m hoping a trial version will be available before buying? Anyway, great work!

[Quote]on new machines try top down test, from Intel, to g3 if you can ![/endQuote]
@ nicolas:

I have tested the app on a G3 Powerbook (Lombard) and can tell you that a G4 CPU is needed, as the G3 does not have the Altivec functions needed to support Core Image if your video hardware doesn’t (as the hardware in this laptop, a Rage Pro LT chipset, does not). I would imagine that if you had, say, a B&W G3 machine with an appropriate video card (Ex. ATI Radeon 9200 128MB PCI) that Pixelmator would work properly, albeit on the chuggy side without a decent CPU upgrade (like Powerlogix’s G3/1GHz ZIF upgrade). I actually have a friend with a machine with these specs, but, because I respect the developers, I am unwilling to test on this machine and see if my theories are correct. I do, however, own a 667MHz Powerbook G4 Titanium, a 2x2GHz Powermac G5, and a 4×2.66GHz Mac Pro, and so far, aside from bugs already noted, Pixelmator works fine on these machines. I, like some others of us, fully expect to replace Photoshop in my production pipeline with this wonderful software.

Shawn Blower,
I was just trying to offset some of that negative feedback for damage control since Pixelmator is still in beta. I realize that true Wacom support is seen as a very essential feature with graphics programs, but I’m patient enough to wait for it if it doesn’t already exist.

When I said that it is supported, yes I did mean that a Wacom tablet works on ALL applications without pressure sensitivity. It isn’t necessarily a walk in the park to add pressure sensitivity to an application. Very few programs actually do a decent job with Wacom pressure sensitivity on the Mac…….like Sketchbook Pro, Rita, Art Rage etc…..I always turn off brush dynamics in Photoshop because their Wacom support sucks IMHO.

It seems to me that you’re in violation of the beta guidelines for blasting Pixelmator prematurely – before version 1.0……and you’re guilty of being an asshole. That should be reason enough to revoke your beta access (if it hasn’t been already).

Hello,
Is there any way that we can get in for the second round of private beta testing?
I am anticipating for Pixelmator so much and it would be very nice if some of us who missed that first round to be able to test it and tell our feedback and tell you of any glitches and bugs that might occur.

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